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> I'm coming around to the Dark Forest theory, personally, as terrifying as it is. If you're silent with the intent of remaining hidden, then that behavior mus

> I'm coming around to the Dark Forest theory, personally, as terrifying as it is. If you're silent with the intent of remaining hidden, then that behavior must have been learned. Either you evolved from a prey type of species, or a non-apex predator. It would be strange of humanity is the only apex-ish predator intelligent-ish life form in the universe that blasts signals into space without consideration of who might hear them.

PaulHoule 2y ago
We don't have telescopes capable of receiving accidental emissions from Earth (say television) at interstellar distances. It seems reasonable that you could use the gravitational lens of a star to do so if you could launch a probe to 800 au for each and every star system you want to monitor. As we transition to digital technology, our transmissions look more like broadband noise as opposed to having a strong carrier wave, cellular communications in 2025 are far less visible than, say, television broadcasts of 1975. Deliberate attempts to communicate with other intelligent life are quite forlorn. This message was sent to a globular cluster 25,000 light years away https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message There a few 100,000 stars there, somebody there would have to be looking at our sun in particular at the right time, then it would take at least 25,000 years to get a message back to us, in which case it is likely that we'll be extinct, collapsed back to hunter-gatherers, or maybe advanced but forgotten that we sent the message or don't care anymore.
Etherlord87 2y ago
> If you're silent with the intent of remaining hidden, then that behavior must have been learned. Either you evolved from a prey type of species, or a non-apex predator. Or you learned it in a non-evolutionary way, through logical reasoning.
asdff 2y ago
No it is not necesarily learned. Even among species on earth a lot of behaviors are not learned but inherent. In other words, selection acts on a spectrum of behaviors and those with some fitness advantage you are likely to see more frequently in the next generation of offspring, extending until lineages of that offspring with that behavior are potentially all there is. A dark forest planet need not learn to be a dark forest planet in the same way an earth colored beetle need not learn to perfectly mask itself against the dirt from a bird; the fitter mutation given the context of the environment won out.

PaulHoule 2y ago

We don't have telescopes capable of receiving accidental emissions from Earth (say television) at interstellar distances. It seems reasonable that you could use the gravitational lens of a star to do so if you could launch a probe to 800 au for each and every star system you want to monitor. As we transition to digital technology, our transmissions look more like broadband noise as opposed to having a strong carrier wave, cellular communications in 2025 are far less visible than, say, television broadcasts of 1975. Deliberate attempts to communicate with other intelligent life are quite forlorn. This message was sent to a globular cluster 25,000 light years away https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message There a few 100,000 stars there, somebody there would have to be looking at our sun in particular at the right time, then it would take at least 25,000 years to get a message back to us, in which case it is likely that we'll be extinct, collapsed back to hunter-gatherers, or maybe advanced but forgotten that we sent the message or don't care anymore.

Etherlord87 2y ago

> If you're silent with the intent of remaining hidden, then that behavior must have been learned. Either you evolved from a prey type of species, or a non-apex predator. Or you learned it in a non-evolutionary way, through logical reasoning.

asdff 2y ago

No it is not necesarily learned. Even among species on earth a lot of behaviors are not learned but inherent. In other words, selection acts on a spectrum of behaviors and those with some fitness advantage you are likely to see more frequently in the next generation of offspring, extending until lineages of that offspring with that behavior are potentially all there is. A dark forest planet need not learn to be a dark forest planet in the same way an earth colored beetle need not learn to perfectly mask itself against the dirt from a bird; the fitter mutation given the context of the environment won out.